Published by Argonautica on 07 Dec 2007
Yet Another Benefit to Canceling Cable
I have talked before about when I finally canceled cable. The troops were recently pushing hard to re-subscribe to cable, but a side effect I hadn’t really thought about saved me.
Now that the holiday season has arrived, questions my daughter get asked frequently are “what would you like for Christmas?” and “what would you like Santa to bring you this year?”
Formerly she had no trouble spilling out a laundry list of items, mainly Disney princess crap, that she wanted. Now she responds “I don’t know what I want because Daddy canceled cable.” Of course that response gives me a delightful frugal thrill when I hear it, but more importantly, I never really realized how profound an effect the marketing efforts of Disney and the other kid channels have on children.
The kid channels are well-crafted to teach children to become unthinking consumers and then wring every possible penny out of them. Shows, stars, and commercials are becoming indistinguishable due to product branding. Now a kid star is promoted across as many forms of media as possible and children are indoctrinated before they have the ability to recognize and resist what is being done the them. The easiest answer to that problem is don’t let them watch the shows and the easiest way to do that is: cancel cable!
When Mrs. A heard little A’s response, she abandoned her cable lobbying. The part I haven’t shared with her yet is that when little A was recently pressed for a Santa request, she asked Santa to bring something for her Mommy. That’s a far cry from last holiday season, when every commercial on the Disney channel was greeted with an “I want that!”